Vital records, as their name suggests, are connected with central life events: birth, marriage, and death. Maintained by civil authorities,
these public records are prime sources of genealogical information. These records are critically important in genealogy research, often supplying details on
family members well back into the nineteenth century.

There are many sources for birth, death and marriage events that are not in the vital records office. Cemeteries, church records,
newspapers, military records, immigration and naturalization records, as well as family records in letters and Bibles, are all places where
evidence of vital events might be found. Once vital records have been researched, and especially if none are available for the location
and time period required, a good procedure would be to try to locate your ancestors using census records.